


And Though We Are Not Now That Strength.

by Lanna Michaels (lannamichaels)



Series: What Remains Behind [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Come And See The Violence Inherent In The Worldbuilding, POV Neville Longbottom, Squib Harry Potter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:55:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25091977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lannamichaels/pseuds/Lanna%20Michaels
Summary: Neville Longbottom was almost a squib.
Relationships: Neville Longbottom & Harry Potter
Series: What Remains Behind [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/279153
Comments: 17
Kudos: 136





	And Though We Are Not Now That Strength.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson. All warnings from the first parts are still relevant.

1.

Neville Longbottom was almost a squib. But he wasn't, in the end. That mattered enough to get him into Hogwarts and it really mattered when he got a letter from Harry Potter himself.

It mattered when he met Harry. It mattered when he went to another school to fight Voldemort. It mattered when he toured the school after the battle was over.

It mattered when he touched the walls and thought, "I almost ended up here." It mattered when he remembered his family would have killed him first.

It mattered when he asked Harry if he wanted to come back with him to Hogwarts afterwards.

It mattered when Harry said no.

It mattered when Neville went back to Hogwarts without him.

It mattered, because Neville Longbottom was not a squib.

2.

Neville went back to Hogwarts. He graduated low in the class rankings, but he still graduated. He was a wizard and no one could dispute that any longer.

He moved in with Dean and Seamus afterward. He got a job at a local herbology center. He supposed he thrived.

He still wrote to Harry.

People didn't know what to make of Harry Potter. Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived. Harry Potter, the Boy Who Won. Harry Potter, who didn't have magic and defeated Voldemort anyway. Harry Potter was a complication. Harry Potter was a problem. Neville understood why Harry stayed away.

Neville Longbottom was a wizard. Neville Longbottom wasn't a complicated hero. Neville Longbottom got too much congratulation. And Neville Longbottom... Neville remembered, he was almost a squib. Almost.

He'd spent seven years proving himself not one, but wasn't that Harry's point, in the end? Neville shouldn't have had to. And Harry was a squib and Harry'd defeated Voldemort; it couldn't be _that_ bad.

There was a prophecy, Neville was told. Either he or Harry had to be the one to defeat Voldemort. Harry had lost his magic doing it the first time around, but it hadn't taken Neville to do it the second time. It had still been Harry. Neville had helped, but it had still been Harry. Neville wasn't necessary, except maybe as Harry's connection to the magical world. And Neville had kept his magic. Both times, both defeats of Voldemort, and Neville hadn't been hurt at all. It wasn't right, that he hadn't lost anything. It wasn't right, that Harry had lost everything. None of this was right.

Neville'd had friends at school. He hadn't been the most popular, but he'd had friends. But none of them understood that paralyzing fear, that he'd fail out, that he'd prove himself a squib, that his Hogwarts letter was wrong, that he didn't deserve to be there, that he didn't belong in the world he was born into. That his family was right to try to kill him to make him prove himself a wizard. That not being a wizard was worth dying because of it. He could never be anything if he wasn't a wizard; he couldn't even be alive. And if he wasn't a wizard, if he wasn't good enough, if he failed out of Hogwarts, what was there for him, for Neville Longbottom, at all?

But Harry went around every day as a squib. Harry lived his life as a squib. Harry wasn't scared.

Neville wished, so hard, that he could stop being scared.

3.

Five years after the war ended, Neville Longbottom went into business with Harry Potter. Neville handled all the magical needs of their nursery, which wasn't much at all, in the end. A lot of herbology was patience. A lot of herbology was knowledge. Not much of herbology was waving a wand around.

Neville talked about his time at Hogwarts with a forced cheer he didn't feel. Here he was, with Harry Potter. Here they were, in the same place. Did it matter, in the end, which school they had gone to, which path they had taken to get there? They were still _there_.

Harry talked about his school like it saved his life. Harry talked about his school like it was his home. Harry went back to visit his school all the time. Harry brought back students to work apprenticeships. Harry was a proud graduate of the Merlin Academy and the Merlin Academy was proud to claim him as their own. Classes came by every so often to have Harry translate their snakes for them. He was a celebrity to them as much as he was in the magical world, but the Merlin Academy loved him.

Neville never had anything like that at school. He'd been too worried about-- well, about everything. He'd had to be good enough for his parents, who'd never know either way if he was good enough or not. He'd had to be good enough for his relatives, who'd never thought he was good enough anyway. He'd struggled at school. He hadn't enjoyed it, he'd just lived it. He'd made friends with the boys in Gryffindor, but if he'd been sorted into any other House, he supposed he'd have made friends there just the same. Time would still tell if those friendships were strong enough to survive long beyond graduation. Neville's memories of Hogwarts were of a school, not a haven. It was where he'd learned to be a wizard and not much more.

No, he'd learned _magic_. Neville thought maybe Harry was teaching him to be a wizard.

It was in the little things. It was in the way Harry knew magical theory but couldn't do magic; the way Neville made a spell work but couldn't always explain why. He'd spent so long painstakingly learning wand movements and enunciation. He'd spent less time learning why. The mechanics had consumed all his time; the theory hadn't been that important when he might fail out if he couldn't do the mechanics. Neville'd always been better at the slower kinds of magic, so it was funny, a little, how for the rest of his life, he'd be famous for Defense. None of his Defense teachers had thought anything of him. But he'd learned what he did, because he had to, because of Voldemort.

With Voldemort gone, Neville had gone back to his real strengths and interests. Harry called it being able to grow magic and Neville understood exactly what he meant. Neville learned from every leaf, from every root that clenched around his wrist, from every time he had to shout spells at vines so they didn't eat a customer. Every day was something new, every day was a discovery, every day was a work of magic. Every day taught Neville what being a wizard was. It was the way magic twined around his spine, the way his body knew things that his mind hadn't caught onto yet, the way his wand found its way into his grip, always perfect after years of practice. It was in the automatic.

It was also in the purposeful. It was in working through catalogs with Harry, it was in planning out their plantings, it was in sending letters to all their big customers to find out what their expected needs would be for the next year. Because that was part of magic, too. And that was something Neville had learned from Voldemort. Magic wasn't about wars, it wasn't about strength, it was about life. Magic was something you spent your life learning, not seven years in Hogwarts and that was the end. Neville hadn't seen that when he was in school. He'd seen it as something to pass and then move on from. He hadn't thought he'd still be studying magic years later, that he'd need to, that part of being a wizard was never stopping learning how to be a wizard. Leaving Hogwarts hadn't made him the final version of the wizard that Neville Longbottom could be.

Starting Potter & Longbottom, though... that was giving him a roadmap to the wizard he'd be for the rest of his life.

4.

Harry's snakes took some getting used to. Neville had only seen magical snakes in Care of Magical Creatures and as potions ingredients. Harry saw them as friends.

Harry had a talent that was so rare in the magical world that Neville had never met anyone before who had it, and Harry used it frivolously. He chatted with his snakes all the time. It must have seemed to Neville the way Neville's magic must have seemed to Harry: it was something wonderful to one of them. It was something utterly mundane to the other.

Neville had worked so hard to have his magic be mundane to himself. Harry'd probably worked the same amount with his parseltongue.

Parseltongue wasn't like magic; anyone could learn it if someone was willing to teach them. Neville learned to say "can you please move three pots down, thanks" and "the best sun is in the other corner" and "can you please point me to Harry?" 

What Harry learned in turn from Neville, Neville didn't know. He hoped it was something near as useful, or near as _cool_ as being able to talk to a snake.

5.

Ten years after Neville graduated from Hogwarts, they asked him to come back to teach.

When Neville was a child, his family tried to scare him into having magic and it worked. When Neville was a teenager, he saw a different world for squibs than he'd ever thought possible, but it hadn't made him stop being scared.

Neville was twenty-seven and sometimes he was still scared. He was still scared he'd wake up one day without magic. He was still scared that, no matter how much work he'd done for it, his magic would be gone.

But he wasn't scared anymore about what would happen if it did. He knew what he'd be if it all went away. And he knew who'd still be his friend if it did.

He said no, and thank you.

**Author's Note:**

> [this post on dreamwidth](https://lannamichaels.dreamwidth.org/1132050.html); [this post on tumblr](https://lannamichaels.tumblr.com/post/622824274448744448/and-though-we-are-not-now-that-strength-lanna)


End file.
